Jade Dumpling Noodle House

When I went to the Jade Dumpling Noodle House, it was so new that the grand opening flowers had only just started wilt. I was excited at the promise of delicious dumplings and noodles in Canberra, fingers crossed!

They have an ordering system that you would sometimes find at yum cha places where you just write how many of each dish that you would like. Trying not to go too crazy, I grabbed the pen and started marking numbers against everything that I wanted to try without taking much notice of how many people were there to eat with me. I’m sure I didn’t order too much.

Spicy wontonsvegetable and pork wonton dipped in a spicy sauce, peanut butter and chili sauce (10pcs $10.80). All the heat comes from the sauce so I was careful not to smother it in. A lovely dumpling but I couldn’t taste any peanut butter in the sauce, which is probably a good thing because I think it would have ruined it.

Radish cakedeep fried pastry filled with radish, dried shrimp and shallot (4pcs $8.80). I didn’t read the description and what I was expecting was a square prisms not these spheres. The pastry was nice and flaky but it left the filling to be a bit too mushy.

Peking duckserved with 6pcs of Chinese pancake, second course stir fried with handmade noodle (2 course $36.00).The noodles were a bit salty but what annoyed me the most was playing ‘find the duck’ amongst the noodles.

Finally found one!

The duck pancakes were a bit meh, nothing too spectacular here.

Jade Xiao long baosteam mini pork bun(6pcs $8.40). The best xiao long bao in Canberra (but it has nothing on Din Tai Fung). Dumpling etiquette requires you to delicately pick up the dumpling and dip it in soy sauce or Chinese vinegar (the more acceptable option) and it eat it in one bite (don’t burn your mouth though). What you should get, unlike most places in Canberra, is a ‘soup’ that has developed during the steaming of the dumpling with all the meaty juices, so be careful not to break it open while picking it up.

Pork and chive dumpling(steamed 10pcs $11.50). Not a fan of these at all, I felt that the wrapper was too thick and didn’t have a good wrapper to filling ratio. I didn’t want to waste them so I ended up dipping the nude filling in a bit of soy sauce.

Pork bunpan fried pork bun (6pcs $8.80). This is not what I expected at all, it should have been an actual fluffy bun (think BBQ pork bun) with a pan fried bottom. Instead this was just a pork dumpling with a wrapper that was way too thick to be pleasant.

Szechuan eggplant($15.80) braised eggplant with minced pork. I’m a big fan of this dish so I wanted to see their take on it. It is usually very oily but this wasn’t and it was so delicious.

Jade fried riceHouse Special fried rice ($11.80). I didn’t really taste much in this dish as I mainly used it as a sauce sponge for all the eggplant I was eating.

Peking pork ribsdeep fried pork ribs with peking sauce ($16.80). I was hoping for something along the lines of hot rock salt but this was really just sweet and sour deep fried pork.

Kung po chickenstir fried chicken with Kung po sauce ($15.80). Wow, I was amazed at how incredibly tender the chicken was and even though I avoided the dry chilies I was still expecting a spicy kick to it but it didn’t have any.

We started with the first dish when it arrived but not long after taking a quick snap shot of it, one dish after another just kept on coming like an avalanche and I couldn’t keep up. I’m hoping that the dumplings will get better, I hear that they hired a chef from Hong Kong especially when they were opening this restaurant.